Funny Pages
A teenage cartoonist adopts an unseemly role model in Owen Kline’s outrageous and highly individual directorial debut.
Daniel Zolghadri
The most striking fact about this film which marks the feature debut as writer/director of Owen Kline, son of Kevin, is that it finds a totally individual voice. Its central figure is a teenager, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), and the film follows his adventures – or more correctly his misadventures – when he rebelliously refuses to go back to school in Princeton and instead leaves home for the first time to live in Trenton. All of this is bound up with Robert’s drawing skills, his obsession with comics and his desire to have a career in that field. That being so, Funny Pages will undoubtedly remind many of Terry Zwigoff’s acclaimed 1994 documentary Crumb since Robert is partly inspired by the kind of sexually explicit underground comics for which Robert Crumb was famous. Furthermore, given that the producers of Funny Pages include Josh and Benny Safdie comparisons with their off-beat features, Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019), may also come to mind. Indeed, admirers of the Safdie brothers might well take to Funny Pages but, nevertheless, Kline’s film, one which makes a feature of the comedy of unease, feels too original to be strongly indebted to other works.
Although Robert is an adolescent very familiar with Crumb-style erotic drawings (what we see of them in the film’s first few minutes immediately explains the 18 certificate), he is a kind of innocent despite being driven by his ambitions. In contrast, the world into which he ventures is peopled by adults who are for the most part bizarre, threatening and in some cases lunatic. Even before he sets out for Trenton, he has a decidedly uneasy experience with his old fat art teacher (Stephen Adly Guirgis). The latter insists on posing nude for him in the course of which he speaks as though this were an orthodox teaching procedure while also giving off clear signs that he is a paedophile. The way in which that scene blends an off-beat comic tone with a firm awareness of serious danger is one of the best examples of what Kline is aiming for here.
As the film goes on, Robert finds a chance to earn money in the offices of a lawyer (Marcia DeBonis) and one of the clients she is defending, Wallace (Matthew Maher,) is another disturbing presence, albeit somebody whom Robert cultivates on learning that he had been an assistant colour separator working for a celebrated comic book. Also featured is the cheap basement where Robert becomes a tenant in Trenton, a place as sleazy its landlord (Michael Townsend Wright). The impact of all this is made the stronger because Kline has found the ideal way to shoot the film (he gives a special emphasis throughout to close-up shots featuring faces) and because the casting – especially the look of all the more disreputable characters – is absolutely perfect.
But however well-judged these various aspects are, the big question that hovers over Funny Pages is the extent to which the material works on whatever level you choose to judge it. The film’s nastier elements could be treated as simply being those parts of the movie in which the comedy turns blacker. On the other hand, it could be that the film’s darkness - it extends beyond creepy sexual implications to a moment of physical violence - is meant to be shocking in a more serious way. Certainly, there are times when the mix does work (the veteran Louise Lasser has a telling cameo in a scene set in a pharmacy). But overall I found myself in a no man’s land finding the film neither comic enough to sustain that aspect nor real enough to make one feel involved with the characters (Robert with his self-centred outlook is not always easy to like). Comedy is so often a matter of personal taste that some may regard my response here as misjudged. Nevertheless, one further comparison came to mind and it reinforced my belief that it is possible to do better than this when blending humour and outrageous moments with human concern for a film’s characters. That was what Todd Solondz achieved in 1998 with Happiness and, for all its good points, Funny Pages never comes close to achieving anything as effective as that.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel. Maria Dizzia, Josh Pais, Marcia DeBonis, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Michael Townsend Wright, Cleveland Thomas Jr., Ron Rifkin, Louise Lasser.
Dir Owen Kline, Pro Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Sebastian Bear-McClard, Ronald Bronstein, Oscar Boyson and David Duque-Estrada, Screenplay Owen Kline, Ph Sean Price Williams, and Hunter Zimny Pro Des Madeline Sadowski and Audrey Turner, Ed Erin DeWitt and Owen Kline, Costumes Emily Constantino and Audrey Turner.
A24/Elara Pictures-Curzon.
87 mins. USA. 2022. Us Rel: 26 August 2022. UK Rel: 16 September 2022. Cert. 18.